


Buried Treasure

by imaginary_golux



Series: Fractured Fairy Tales [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Minor Violence, Snow-white and Rose-red Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 06:48:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7212211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn and Rey are perfectly happy together in their little cottage in the forest, but one stormy winter's night a bear knocks on their door and asks for space beside their fire, and their lives change forever.</p>
<p>Beta by my Best of all Beloveds, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Buried Treasure

Rey and Finn have lived in this cottage together for - not quite as long as they can remember, because both of them remember being elsewhere, once, and finding the cottage as a blessed refuge from the cruelty of the world - but for many years. It’s a small cottage, one big room with a loft for their bed, but it suffices them well enough. Finn keeps it clean, cooks their meals and keeps them in chopped firewood and carven furniture, sells his carvings in the nearby village to buy those things they cannot make for themselves - flour and butter and sugar, cloth and soap - and Rey hunts in the forest and cares for their garden and keeps them in fresh meat and fresher vegetables, tends to their chickens with gentle hands and gathers their eggs herself. It is a quiet life, far from the wars they remember fleeing, and they like it. Sometimes people in the village ask if they don’t get lonely, out there just the two of them in the woods, but Rey and Finn prefer each other’s company to any other. Rey, in fact, prefers not to interact with most other people at all, which is why Finn is in charge of going into town with his carvings and the spare meat and skins from her hunting - _he_ actually likes talking to people.

The townsfolk call them the Roses, for the great two-colored rosebush which grows beside their cottage door, and since neither Rey nor Finn knows what their surname truly is, they shrug and let the new name grow around them like briars, until they can scarcely remember a time they were not Rey and Finn Rose.

And for many years this goes on, and they are content with each other, and with their cottage, and with the forest around them and the rosebush at their door and the comfort of each other’s presence when the long nights remind them of half-forgotten wars.

*

And then one winter evening, when they are sitting by the stove, Rey in the armchair Finn made for her sewing her jacket back together after it got caught on a thornbush, Finn leaning against her legs as he whittles a toy for one of the village children, tossing the scraps of wood into the fire as he goes - one winter evening there is a knock on the door. Finn and Rey look at each other in confusion. They are far from town and it is a foul night, windy and snowswept and miserable, and no one should be out and about in such weather.

Finn rolls to his feet and goes to answer the door, and staggers backwards in shock and dismay at the _bear_ framed in the doorway. Rey yelps and scrambles out of her chair, going for the crossbow hanging on the wall. But the bear hunkers down, trying its hardest to look harmless, and says, “Please don’t be afraid - I won’t hurt you. I was only hoping I could warm myself by your fire.”

Talking bears are not exactly a common phenomenon, even in this forest, which has an overabundance of magical animals. Rey pauses with her hand on the crossbow and blinks at the bear, and Finn picks himself up off the floor and says, slowly, “If you mean no harm to us, be welcome.”

“Thank you,” says the bear, and steps slowly into the room. Finn closes the door behind him and blinks at the snow-dusted, enormous animal in the middle of the floor, and Rey gives him an incredulous look from the opposite wall, and then the bear flops down on the rug in front of the stove and makes a great huffing sound of contentment and curls up like a cat.

“If all that snow melts on you, you’re going to be very damp and unhappy,” Finn points out after a moment.

The bear gives him a pleading look, and Finn honestly can’t help laughing, and goes and finds a spare bit of cloth and starts to rub the snow off of the bear’s thick fur. Rey watches for a while, and then comes over with another bit of cloth and helps, and by the time the bear is dry they’ve both just sort of sprawled out over it, because the bear puts out heat like a furnace and is soft and lovely to hold. The bear huffs laughter at them and then dozes off happily, and Rey and Finn shrug at each other and end up falling asleep draped across their unlikely guest.

In the morning, the bear shakes himself awake while they are putting together breakfast, and says, “Thank you. It’s a long time since I had the pleasure of a night beside the fire.”

“You can come back, if you like,” Rey offers, and Finn gives her a great gleaming smile - he wouldn’t have offered, knowing how Rey likes her privacy, but he kind of liked the novelty of someone else in their little cottage, even if the someone else is a talking bear.

“Thank you,” says the bear, and Finn opens the door for him, and he goes trundling off into the snowy forest.

The bear comes back the next night, and the next, and after a week of regular visits it’s like he’s been their friend forever. He tells them stories, when they ask, about the things he’s seen in the forest; he listens to Rey’s stories of her hunting, to Finn’s tales about the village life, with great interest, asks questions and gives them pleading looks until they dredge more stories from their memories. And he seems perfectly happy to be hugged and sprawled upon and ruffled, his fur soft and warm as the best blankets, is always careful with his claws and never show his teeth - after a while, Rey and Finn almost begin to forget that he _is_ a bear, a predator, because he’s never anything but sweet as honey to them.

And then spring comes, and one night the bear says, soft and a little sad, “I will have to go away for a while - for the warmer months. I will not be able to visit you again until next winter.”

“Why not?” Rey demands. “No one comes here in the summer either - it’s not like you’ll be spotted by hunters or anything.”

The bear chuffs laughter. “No, nothing like that, thorny Rey. There is a treasure I guard from one who would steal it, and in the winter months the ground is too hard for him to dig it up, but once the ground begins to thaw, the thief will return.”

“Oh,” says Finn. “Well, that’s awful. We’ll miss you, bear.” He kisses the bear on its muzzle, and the bear nudges him affectionately.

“I shall miss you greatly, my dears,” he says sadly. “But will your door be open to me again next winter?”

“Of course,” says Rey. “We will expect you back as soon as the ground is hard - and I garden, so I _know_ when that is. Don’t you dare be late.”

“I would never,” the bear assures her, “risk Rey’s wrath in such a manner.”

Finn laughs. “Sensible bear.”

The bear leaves the next morning, just as it usually does, and that is the last time they see him for a while. The cottage seems a lot emptier without a bear in it - well, he took up a lot of floor space, but it’s more than that. There’s something missing, now, that they didn’t even know they wanted.

For once, Rey and Finn find themselves looking forward to winter.

*

It’s high summer before the next strange thing happens, and Finn is out looking for firewood. He finds a good big tree, downed by the last summer storm and ready to be chopped up, and is about to start working when he hears someone swearing vociferously on the other side of the tree trunk. He goes scrambling over the log to find a tall man in black robes kneeling beside the tree, his long hair caught in a crack in the trunk.

“D’you need help?” Finn asks politely.

“Can’t you see I need help, you fool?” the tall man snarls back. “I was putting a wedge in this damned tree, and it snapped shut on my hair - stop gawping and come get me free!”

Finn raises an eyebrow at the sheer _rudeness_ of the man, but he comes closer anyhow and inspects the trouble. The tree has caught the man quite thoroughly, and Finn’s pretty sure he can’t chop the man free without quite probably injuring him, so after a few minutes’ careful consideration - with the tall man’s swearing an endless backdrop - Finn draws his knife and very carefully cuts the man’s hair right up against the wood, so as to minimize the damage.

The tall man stands up immediately, snarling, “You uncouth wretch, cutting off part of my beautiful hair!” and goes stomping off into the woods without even thanking Finn. Finn shrugs and goes back to his woodcutting. Assholes gonna be assholes, after all.

A few days later, Rey is out hunting and comes across the same tall man - Finn described him very accurately over dinner - sitting beside a stream, screaming invective at a fish. His fishing line is tangled up in his long hair, and the fish is swimming back and forth as fast as it can and yanking quite hard on the tall man’s hair as it does so, and he apparently has nothing with which he can cut the line.

“Well, wench, aren’t you going to do anything _useful_ , or are you just going to stand there with your stupid mouth hanging open?” the man demands. Rey has more of a temper than Finn does, and normally she wouldn’t take that sort of language from anyone, but she supposes having your hair yanked by a fish might be the sort of thing which would make you irritated enough to swear even if you were the most even-tempered person in the world, so she comes over and inspects the trouble, and then, when she can see no other option, she draws a knife and cuts the hair, very carefully, where it’s tangled with the fishing line. The tall man jumps to his feet and scowls down at her.

“You and that fish must be in cahoots to disfigure me,” he snarls, and goes stalking off up the riverbank in high dudgeon. Rey shrugs and goes on the way she was headed to begin with, and comes home that night with a brace of rabbits and an interesting story, and then nearly forgets about the whole encounter.

Rey and Finn are actually on their way to their favorite picnic spot a few days later, not even thinking about their tall and unpleasant acquaintance, when they come around a corner and see him fighting off an absolutely enormous eagle. It’s large enough that it’s actually got him off the ground, its claws tangled in his long black cloak, and Rey and Finn run forward and seize his legs, yanking as hard as they can. Rey and Finn are both a great deal stronger than they look, and their combined effort is enough to rip the cloak and bring the tall man tumbling back to earth again. He picks himself up and dusts himself off as the eagle flaps away in disappointment, and then he picks up the remains of his cloak and sneers at them. “You clumsy creatures, is it not enough that you have marred my hair but you must ruin my clothing also?” he demands, and goes stalking away into the trees.

Rey and Finn look at each other, and Rey says, “Wow. The next time I see him about to be carried off, I think I’ll cheer for the eagle.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met someone so determined to be an asshole,” Finn agrees, and they collect their picnic basket and go on their way with a concerted effort to forget about the brief, unpleasant interlude.

As they make their way home that evening, though, they encounter the tall man again, hunkered over something in the clearing where he was attacked. When they get close enough, they can see that what he’s inspecting is a great heap of gems, gleaming in every color of the rainbow; and then he looks up and sees them and starts desperately trying to shove the gems into a sack, as though terrified they’ll take them.

“For goodness sake, we’re not going to steal from you,” Finn says exasperatedly. “Not _everyone_ is an asshole, you know.”

“Just what a thief would say,” the tall man sneers, and then there’s a soft sound and a bear comes lumbering out of the woods behind the tall man and rears up on his hind legs, enormous and deadly, and strikes the tall man a blow that sends him flying across the clearing to land crumpled against the base of a tree, neck very clearly broken.

Rey steps in front of Finn, fumbling for her knife - _their_ bear would not hurt them, but bears do all look the same, and this one has just demonstrated a clear willingness to do violence. But the bear hunkers down on all four limbs and says, “My dears, I’m sorry to have frightened you,” and so she waits, Finn’s hand on her shoulder, as the bear comes forward - and between one step and the next the bear’s heavy pelt seems to melt away, and what walks across the clearing to them is the handsomest man either of them have ever seen.

“I don’t understand,” Rey says when the man who was a bear stops a few feet away, rocking on the balls of his feet as though he would _like_ to fling himself at them and embrace them, and doesn’t quite dare.

“I am a king’s son,” the man says, smiling at them. “My name is Poe. That -” he gestures at the crumpled heap of a body across the clearing - “was the enchanter who turned me into a bear, and just today he managed to steal my treasure, but with his death his spell is broken.” He takes a deep breath, like he’s bracing himself to say something, and adds, “I know you love it here in the woods, in your cottage, my dears, but I must ask - would you consider coming with me to my father’s kingdom?”

“What would we do there?” Finn asks curiously. Rey has put her knife away, and reached back to tangle her fingers with Finn’s, and they cling to each other tightly.

The man - Poe - gives them a hopeful smile. It’s a really startlingly appealing look. “Well - marry me?”

“What, both of us?” Rey asks, startled.

“I could hardly choose only one of you,” Poe points out. “And I have grown to adore _both_ of you.”

“...Oh,” says Finn, and he and Rey share a long look, and then they both nod.

“Yes,” says Rey, smiling. “We’ll marry you.”

Poe makes an almost bearlike sound of pleasure, a deep rumbling growl, and comes stumbling forward into their arms, kissing Rey and then Finn eagerly.

*

They bring the rosebush to Poe’s father’s kingdom, and plant it below their bedroom window, a reminder of the way they met. And they live happily ever after.

**Author's Note:**

> So in the original fairy tale, or at least the Grimm version, Snow White and Rose Red do everything together and are admonished by their mother to share everything, and then right at the end of the tale Snow White marries the handsome prince and Rose Red marries his brother. It honestly feels kind of tacked on, like the teller realized suddenly that the only possible rational ending to the tale was polygamy and went, "Shit shit shit they're sisters," and added the prince's brother. So I fixed it. Threesomes solve many things.
> 
> On another note, everybody should be in awe of Best Beloved, who has put up with being married to me for three years today.


End file.
